Leading with Race: The Government Alliance on Race and Equity

“When we enter into a workplace we’re not leaving any of the experiences that we’ve had our entire lives, let alone just that morning on our way at the door. So it’s necessary that people who manage others have an understanding of the complexities and the nuances as much as they can of people who are different than them, whose experiences are not the same.” — Danielle DeRuiter-Williams

In this week’s podcast, Danielle DeRuiter-Williams shares her story of re-orienting her position as Senior Community Development Specialist at the San Francisco Planning Department to focus on issues of social and racial justice. Danielle’s story sheds light on a tension that perhaps many government workers face between their commitments to addressing social inequities, and their position within agencies that may not be explicitly pursuing this kind of work.

One way that Danielle advanced her social and racial justice work while working for the City of San Francisco was through participating in a regional cohort of the Government Alliance for Race and Equity (GARE). A project of new Race Forward and Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society at UC Berkeley, GARE is a national network of governments who are working towards goals of racial equity.

GARE focuses on governments as key players in these goals given the inequalities brought upon by government policies throughout history, but also its ability to intervene across multiple scales and sectors to catalyze larger changes that advance racial equity. GARE acts as a support and organizational network and provides jurisdictions with well-established racial equity practices with tools and resources, while helping to build a racial equity infrastructure and collaborative networks in jurisdictions where they currently do not exist.

In this effort, however, GARE calls for governments to “lead with race,” and focus efforts on those who are faring the worst. While the alliance recognizes that people of other groups are still marginalized, the hope is to introduce a framework for equity than can be then applied to other forms of marginalization. Moreover, government has often created and perpetuated deep and systematic racial inequities, and specificity in tackling these racial inequities is required in order to achieve success.

To spark change in governments, GARE provides trainings, toolkits, and collaborative learning platforms in order to help governments incorporate a racial equity lens in their work. Resources such as this how-to manual help professionals create racial equity plans, and to measure results of racial equity programs. A toolkit for operationalizing equity also provides useful strategies to incorporate an equity lens in a variety of government work and programs.

Are you and your jurisdiction interested in becoming part of the GARE network? Visit GARE’s membership page to learn more, and to look up participating jurisdictions and cohorts. Also be sure to check out upcoming GARE events to meet other governments and civil services at the frontlines of racial equity work, and stay updated with the GARE blog for more on the people and stories behind the movement!

Originally published at themove.mit.edu on October 18, 2018.